Bountiful Harvest

Autumn is the time of Harvest. We have reaped many good fruits and vegetables, though not all of them were from our garden. Thank heavens for generous friends and neighbors! We did enjoy peas, corn, and potatoes from our garden this summer and this fall we harvested 10 heads of garlic, 12 squash, and 4 pumpkins from our garden. The pumpkins grew from the plant Rachel brought home from kindergarten and we transplanted. We watered the garden almost every day through the summer--by hand. Weeding and cultivating was a weekly chore that was never quite done. You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt. Scraping and digging weeds to give the desired plants more room to thrive and grow is satisfying. It is great to enjoy the fruits of our labors. The tomatoes finally started turning red in October as it started turning cold. So we enjoyed a few tomatoes fresh, but there were not enough from our garden to can. A friend let us pick several boxes of tomatoes so we could use them to make salsa, tomato sauce, and spaghetti sauce. That was a fulfilling harvest activity. We put many green tomatoes on a shelf in our pantry to enjoy as they ripen. The butternut squash also line the pantry shelf, waiting for their turn to grace our table.

Some harvest celebrations include art work. Isaac carved pumpkins with his "Friday School" group. That's a local home school group that gets together each Friday to learn together and work on projects. During the term, they learned about plants, created terrariums, went on a nature hike, and carved pumpkins. They used sharp tools to make 3 dimensional figures. Isaac chose to make Mike Wizowski out of his pumpkin. Do you see the resemblance?

Last week, we picked apples from our neighbor's tree and Isaac, being the monkey that he is, made the best apple picker. He could climb up to the highest branches and collect beautiful apples. He and Rachel came up with a system that she would stand on the ground with the long apple-picker, which is basically a basket on the end of a stick, and he would fill the basket will apples until it was full, then she would pull it down, unload it into our box, and put it up again. Yesterday, we made apple pie filling to add to our stock of food in the freezer. I couldn't resist making one fresh apple pie. It was delicious!

Our neighbor also has a beautiful raspberry patch that she let us pick from a couple times this year. We LOVE to pick and eat raspberries! In fact, when I bring Isaac along to pick, he ends up eating every one he picks! Rachel eats about half of what she picks. The raspberries that we collected that didn't get immediately eaten were made into a beautiful raspberry freezer jam. There is nothing better on a cold winter day than some of that homemade jam on toast. It comforts our souls and reminds us of bountiful days of harvest. We are grateful for the bounty the Lord blesses us with.